Eleanor and I were among the first 109 voters (of both parties) at our polling place. Usually, the church lawn is chockablock with signs for the candidates just beyond the 100-foot electioneering limit sign; today, though, there were only the crickets:

Election districts were combined for the day, so there were just two tables- blue for good boys and girls, red for idiots. I had the place to myself as I pondered.

The actual vote? No pondering required; I'll come back to that. But NY Dem rules are weird; your vote for the actual candidate determines how many delegates they'll get, but you also cast votes for the delegates themselves. Our district had seven on offer, and the split could be 7-0 if one or the other gets 90ish percent of the district vote, moving down to 4-3 as X approaches 50-50. So, yeah, a one-vote win in a Congressional District could mean a lot.

The candidate votes determine how many; the delegate votes determine which ones get to go party. I made a deliberate choice to split my votes between Clinton and Sanders delegates, avoiding the Dear Leader Party Hacks from Democratic HQ who drank the Hillary Kool-Aid months ago and have been ignoring the opponent as best they can. So if Hillary wins the actual vote but they're denied the chance to go to the convention as her delegates, I'll be doubly happy.

Because, yes, she got the vote that counts.

I've had many discussions- mostly reasoned, occasionally drifting into the badlands- with a few Bernie supporters, who I completely respect. (And, this is key, I pledge to support the nominee and I think, in the end, they will, too.) One of the last-minute talk pieces from one of them quoted a passionate Sanders supporter, Robert Reich, who must be convinced since he was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor. The money shot from his piece (which I had already read) was this:

I’ve known Hillary Clinton since she was 19 years old, and have nothing but respect for her. In my view, she’s the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have.

But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have.

He's right. But the political system we should have? Should also have, at a minimum, the following:

* A constitutional Equal Rights Amendment and corresponding full pay equity;* Full protection for LGBTs in all aspects of their lives;* A massive reworking of the military-industrial complex in terms of both dollars and strategies;* Ponies.

Okay, that last part is snarky. But we should've had the first three since the 1970s, and they're now more resisted than ever. In part, it's because our national political dialogue isn't one; it's a polarized-by-design system that for years has been driven by ad buys and sound bites, and if anything today is reduced even more to vitroilic memes, short tweets, and even shorter hashtags. And Bernie and his supporters are among the biggest offenders; they've branded the only other candidate of their party as $hillary, at least one of his speakers has called her a whore, and they send out protests of unfairness and "establishment" every time things don't go their way.

Facts tend to get lost in these shortenings of reality. For months, Clinton has been facing demands to RELEASETHETRANSCRIPTS of her paid speech to Goldman Sachs. I still see them almost daily. None of them mention that the speech has been on Youtube for ages- and it's not a sekrit corporate cabal meeting, but the former First Lady of the country encouraging big companies like them to work on achieving pay equity for women.

Know what's really wrong with the political system we do have? A state-level rigged game that allows and even rewards incumbents when they ignore the last 40 years of computer and data technology and continue to gerrymander their own legislative districts but also the Congressional ones. That's why our House of Representatives remained solidly Republican in the 2012 elections despite the national Congressional vote being majority-Democratic. The only way to fix that is state-by-state, and often by amending or replacing protectionist state constitutional provisions- but so-called Progressives tend to oppose any effort to "open Pandora's box" that might threaten their longtime gimmes, and so round we go. You'll be hearing more from me about that, but that's 2017, not 2016.

We'll get the results later. Hillary will win; Bernie will complain. Eventually, it will get sorted and I will back the nominee with a whole heart. Please join me.

Of course I'll back the nominee, but I hope you're not suggesting that the Bernie campaign has been the only one saying shitty things about the other candidate! Both sets of supporters have their sanctimonious assholes, that's for sure.

Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have.

thats why he gets my vote. i'm just not willing to *settle* for what we already have that isnt working.

i want what we SHOULD have. and i want my vote to show that. i want the world to see how much we want the change that bernie is offering.

it makes me sad that people who want bernie to win, vote for hilary instead because they think she's the sure thing. if all those votes went to bernie, he'd be the sure thing! it just makes no sense to me to vote that way.